CONFERENCE: "Citizenship in the Era of Globalization"
An Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Conference
Saturday, May 24, 2008, Centennial House

The 2008 American Cultures and Global Contexts Graduate Conference, an interdisciplinary forum at UC Santa Barbara, presents the problem of citizenship in the era of globalization. Graduate students from the Humanities and Social Sciences will weigh in on the challenges and possibilities of citizenship in a world of state-sponsored and state-less terrorism, rapid resource exploitation, displacement of indigenous communities, migrant labor flows, re-energized border and state security regimes, and robust patriotisms fueled by religious fundamentalism.

In such a world, if we describe it accurately, is citizenship, normally a function of liberal discourse but also recognized as a function of culture, still a relevant term? Which models of citizenship most effectively speak to our current condition, which varieties of citizenship are worth defending, and which modes of modeling “good citizenship” (through the arts, education, activism) might we in the academy embrace? This conference seeks to answer these generative questions and to frame more effective questions by building dialogue across a variety of relevant disciplines.

We are fortunate to have as one of our guides Professor Brook Thomas of UC-Irvine, whose recently published Civic Myths (UNC Press, 2007) draws on the intertwined histories of law and literature to probe the complexities of U.S. citizenship.

FILM SERIES: Children of Men (2006)
Tuesday, May 20, 2008, 6:00PM, South Hall 2710

In anticipation of our fifth annual end-of-year conference, "Citizenship in the Era of Globalization," the ACGCC presents a screening and casual discussion of the 2006 film Children of Men. Aimee Woznick will introduce the film. All are welcome.

Children of Men is set in a dystopic world with no children, no future, and no hope. In the year 2027, eighteen years since the last baby was born, disillusioned Theo (Clive Owen) becomes an unlikely champion of the human race when he is asked to escort a young pregnant woman out of the country as quickly as possible. In a race against time, Theo risks everything to deliver the miracle the world has been anticipating.

ACGCC Celebration of Undergraduate Majors
Tuesday, May 20, 2008; 3:00-5:00 PM; South Hall 2635

Join us for food and drink, American Cultures jeopardy, and discussion and celebration of
student Honors theses and projects. Special prizes will be given to outstanding contributors to the American Cultures Specialization.

This party will be followed by a screening of Children of Men, to which all undergraduates are invited.

ACGCC Working Paper Series
Thursday, May 15, 2008; 6:00 PM

Please join us for the second meeting of the ACGCC's "Working Paper Series." The Working Papers Series offers graduate students the opportunity to workshop their papers in a supportive environment; we have two 'official' commentators on each paper, one faculty member and one graduate student--and, of course, all who attend the meeting are invited to respond. You needn't be directly affiliated with the ACGCC to join us.

For this meeting the presenters are Yanoula Athanassakis and Eric Martinsen. They will be presenting their work-in-progress from their dissertations. Copies of their work will be available beginning on Monday May 12th, in the ACGC Center in 2607 South Hall, in a folder marked: "Working Paper Series."

Food and drink will be served. Lively conversation is guaranteed. For those of you interested in presenting and/or responding formally, please contact Yanoula Athanassakis at: yanoula@umail.ucsb.edu

ROUNDTABLE: "Hope, or the Futures of Environmentalism"
Friday, May 9, 2008; 1:00-3:00 PM; South Hall 1415

While apocalyptic narrative functioned as the first successful vehicle for environmental politics, exemplified by Rachel Carson's classic *Silent Spring,* now it seems that fear and terror no longer motivate significant environmental policy change--at least if we look at polling results regarding the topic of global warming. Yet environmentalist artists, academics, and policy-makers don't agree on what constitutes the next motivating narrative, or exactly how to implement a more sustainable environmental future. Hope for the environment, unlike environmental apocalypse, seems incredible--and those who have attempted to use hope as a buzz-word and impetus for policy-making (such as Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger) tend to have little credibility among environmental activists and scholars.

Join Professors Bill Freudenburg (Environmental Studies) and Lorelei Moosbrugger (Political Science) for an interdisciplinary conversation on the futures of environmental studies, whether hope is alive and, if so, where to find it.

Bill Freudenburg, the 2004-05 President of the Rural Sociological Society, has devoted most of his career to the study of environment-society relationships. He is particularly well-known both for his work on coupled environment-society systems in general and for his work on more specific topics, including resource-dependent communities, the social impacts of environmental and technological change, and risk analysis. He is the winner of Awards from the American Sociological Association, Rural Sociological Society, Pacific Sociological Association, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Recent and forthcoming publications have focused on topics ranging from the social impacts of U.S. oil dependence to the polarized nature of debates over spotted owls, with a special emphasis on “disproportionality,” or the tendency for a major fraction of all environmental impacts to be associated with a surprisingly small fraction of the overall economy.

Lorelei Moosbrugger is a comparative institutionalist focusing on industrialized countries, with regional expertise in Europe. Her primary research agenda concerns the impact of institutions on the ability of governments to provide public goods, especially environmental protection. Moosbrugger is currently working on a book manuscript in which she details how different institutional designs either inhibit or promote the production of collective goods in the face of concentrated costs. She also writes on the role of institutions in ethnic conflict and the policy impacts of the institutional structures of the European Union.

CONFERENCE: "Backwoods, Backwater: Bartering Social Identities in Faulkner's South"
Friday, April 18, 2008, Starting at 9 AM; South Hall 1415

This one day conference seeks to explore the range of identities (both chosen and prescribed) seen in William Faulkner's fiction. As the term "bartering" implies, identity in Faulkner's South is something that is highly gendered as well as multifaceted, a narrative of exchange that is mapped onto interpersonal and intercultural interactions.

Anne Goodwyn Jones, known for her work on femininity, masculinity, and, in particular the masculine romance genre in Faulkner, has been invited to be the keynote speaker. She is the author of Tomorrow is Another Day: The Woman Writer in the South, 1859-1936.
This conference is in preparation for a larger conference next year on "The Hemispheric South."

LECTURE: "Figurational Sociology: The Critical Potential of a European Approach to American Studies" by Prof. Christa Buschendorf (Johann Wolfgang Goethe University)
Friday, Mar. 7, 2008, 1 PM; HSSB 6020

Do scholars in Europe approach American Studies differently than their colleagues in the US? Looking at the history and culture of the United States from a distance, they indeed show a tendency to ask uncommon questions. European perspectives onto America may also derive from intellectual traditions rooted in specific national schools of thought. A typical European approach, e.g. French structuralism, may travel swiftly across the Atlantic and become an integral part of American academia. In other cases, there is notable resistance to certain ideas or methods. The talk will present a socio-historical approach well-known in Europe and widely neglected in the United States: the method of figurative or processual sociology, as derived from the theories of the German-Jewish cultural historian Norbert Elias and the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. Professor Buschendorf will discuss key concepts of this approach – such as “(de)civilizing processes,” “habitus,” “established and outsiders,” or “(symbolic) power” –with regard to their implied notions of the relationship between individuals and society. Jesse Hill Ford’s almost forgotten novel The Liberation of Lord Byron Jones (1965), which highlighted violent eruptions of racial tensions in a small town in Tennessee in the early sixties, will provide a concrete example of both the conceptual advantages of the figurational approach and the reasons for its neglect.  
Professor Buschendorf is Director of the Institut for North American  Studies, Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, Frankfurt-Main.

The event is co-sponsored by the History Department, Policy History program, the Center for Work, Labor, and Democracy, the Department of English, the American Cultures and Global Contexts Center, and the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center.

FILM SCREENING AND DISCUSSION: Manufactured Landscapes (2006, dir. Jennifer Baichwal)
Thursday, Mar. 6, 2008, 6 PM; SH 2635

Join the ACGCC, the Literature and the Environment Colloquium, and the undergraduate English Club for a screening and discussion of this award-winning film about Edward Burtynsky, the internationally-acclaimed photographer known for his large-scale photographs of nature transformed by industry. Tim Gilmore will offer an introduction to the film, and pizza and refreshments will be served.

RECEPTION: Mitsuye Yamada
Tuesday, Feb. 26, 2008, 6 PM; home of Prof. Shirley Geok-Lin Lim

Affliliated faculty and graduate students of the ACGCC are invited to this reception for Mitsuye Yamada. Yamada is a second-generation Japanese American, or Nisei, activist, feminist, poet, and essayist, and the author of six books, including Camp Notes, Desert Run, and Three Asian American Writers Speak Out About Feminism. Individuals planning to attend should RSVP to Shirley Lim, slim@english.ucsb.edu, for directions to the reception.

LECTURE: "Environmental Memory and Planetary Survival," by Professor Lawrence Buell (Harvard University)
Thursday, Nov. 15, 2007, 4:00-6:00 PM, McCune Room 6020

Considered one of the founders of environmental criticism, Professor Lawrence Buell of Harvard University will share his most recent work, which treats the intersections of global and environmental studies. Professor Buell is this year's Jay Hubbell Award winner, awarded by the MLA American Literature Group for lifetime achievement in American literature.

This lecture is part of a year-long series of events sponsored by the ACGCC and intended to promote UCSB's initiative to build upon its already strong programs in Environmental Studies by focusing on how the Humanities contribute to environmental values and activism. Sponsored by the American Cultures & Global Contexts Center, the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, HFA, the Carsey-Wolf Center, the Bren School, Environmental Studies, English, Classics, History of Art and Architecture, the Literature & Environment Colloquium.

Interested graduate students and faculty are welcome to join us for a reception in honor of Professor Buell: Friday Nov. 16, 3:00-5:00 PM, South Hall 2635.

PANEL: The Hypersexuality of Race, featuring Celine Parrenas-Shimizu, Constance Penley, and Mireille Miller-Young
Thursday, October 11, 2007; 4:00PM; HSSB McCune Room 6020

A reading and panel discussion featuring Celine Parrenas-Shimizu, Associate Professor of Asian American Studies, Constance Penley, Professor of Film and Media Studies, and Mireille Miller-Young, Assistant Professor of Women's Studies.

Professors Penley and Miller-Young will comment upon Professor Parrenas-Shimizu's recently published book, THE HYPERSEXUALITY OF RACE: PERFORMING ASIAN/AMERICAN WOMEN ON SCREEN AND SCENE (Duke UP). The book analyzes the production of sexuality for Asian women in western modern moving image visual cultures such as early cinema, stag films, contemporary pornography, Hollywood blockbusters, musicals and independent sexually explicit media by Asian American women.

This event underlines the remarkable fact that UCSB boasts three of the nation's strongest cultural critics working on pornography and film/media studies.

Co-sponsored by the UCSB Interdisciplinary Humanities Center.

TALK & WELCOME PARTY: "Savage Perils: Racial Frontiers and Nuclear Apocalypse in American Culture," by Professor Patrick Sharp (Liberal Studies, Cal State Los Angeles)
Thursday, April 26, 2007, 2:00-3:30PM, South Hall 2617

Patrick Sharp is currently Associate Professor and Associate Chair of Liberal Studies at Cal State, Los Angeles. Professor Sharp will offer a reading from his book, SAVAGE PERILS: RACIAL FRONTIERS AND NUCLEAR APOCALYPSE IN AMERICAN CULTURE, which explores the influence of Darwinism, frontier nostalgia, and literary modernism on nuclear weaponry. Taking into account such factors as anthropological race theory and Asian immigration, Professor Sharp charts the origins of a worldview that continues to shape our culture and politics.

After Professor Sharp's reading, join us for wine, cheese, and conversation at our ACGCC fall welcome party.

CONFERENCE: Intimate Labors
An Interdisciplinary Conference on Domestic, Care, Sex Work
October 4-6, Centennial House, UCSB

Keynote Speakers (in McCune Room, 6020 HSSB):

"From Patient Advocate to Social Advocate: The Work of Nursing," Rose Ann DeMoro, California Nurses Association. October 4th, 7 p.m.

"Caring Everywhere," Viviana A. Zelizer. October 5th, 10 a.m.

Intimate labor is work that entails bodily or emotional closeness or personal familiarity, such as sexual intercourse and washing genitalia, or intimate observation and knowledge of personal information, such as childcare or housekeeping. It exists along a continuum of service and caring labor, from high end nursing and low end housekeeping, and includes sex, domestic, and personal care work. Against a scholarship that considers nurses, nannies, home aides, cleaners, prostitutes, masseuses, therapists, and hostesses apart from each other, this conference seeks to explore intimate labor as a useful category of analysis to understand gender, racial, class, and other power relations as well as look at current economic transformations.

Presented by the Center for Research on Women and Social Justice, Women's Studies Program, University of California, Santa Barbara. Organized by Professor Eileen Boris, Women's Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara
and Professor Rhacel Parreñas, Asian American Studies, University of California, Davis. Sponsored by the University of California Labor and Employment Research Fund; University of California Humanities and Research Institute; University of California, Santa Barbara: College of Letters and Science, Division of Social Sciences, Hull Chair in Women's Studies, Women's Center, Center for the Study of Work, Labor, and Democracy, the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center; College of Humanities, Arts, and Culture Studies at the University of California, Davis.